July 1, 2025 • 48 mins
The costly lesson of mismanaged agency relationships can create quite the hit to your brand. Mike shares a raw account of how trusting an Amazon management agency without proper oversight created a perfect storm of inventory problems that coincided with tariff changes—a mistake that will have a significant cost.
Drawing from both perspectives—Mike as a brand owner who experienced the setback firsthand, and Jon as an agency owner who helps brands navigate Amazon—this conversation delivers crucial insights for anyone considering outsourcing their Amazon operations. The hosts dissect where things went wrong, revealing that the fundamental issue wasn't necessarily the agency itself, but rather the brand's approach of "abdication instead of delegation."
The episode introduces a powerful framework for evaluating agency performance: measuring inputs before outputs. During the first 2-3 months of an agency relationship, brands should focus on concrete actions being taken rather than final results. This means tracking whether promised campaign structures are being implemented, listing refreshes are being completed, and proper keyword segmentation is occurring. Only after this foundation is established should the focus shift to performance metrics.
Beyond tactical advice, the conversation challenges conventional wisdom about KPI selection. Why focusing solely on ACOS or ROAS can be misleading, as these metrics can be easily manipulated. Instead, they advocate for broader measures like TACOS (Total Advertising Cost of Sale) and contribution margin metrics that better reflect true business performance. Discover practical guidance on agency vetting, including interviewing multiple candidates, meeting the actual account manager who'll handle your business, and setting realistic timeframes for evaluation.
Whether you're considering hiring your first Amazon agency or looking to improve an existing partnership, this episode offers an invaluable perspective from those who've experienced both sides of the relationship. Avoid the costly mistakes that even experienced brands can make when navigating the complex world of Amazon management.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another episode of Brand Forge HQ and
Tactics Tuesday.
Today we're talking aboutsomething that I think is really
important for any brand as itcontinues to grow, which is, you
know, when you bring in anagency or you know some sort of
other vendor, and how you work,especially with an agency that's
managing ads.
We'll talk mostly aboutspecifically on Amazon, but I
(00:21):
think a lot of the discussionhere is going to apply as if
you're you know, we have anagency that's helping you on
Meta or Facebook or TikTok.
A lot of these same principlesare going to apply of how do you
work well with an agency.
And so with that, mike, I'mgoing to turn it over to you,
mike, since I know that you knowthis is something that you've
been working and really thinkingon a lot over the last few
(00:42):
weeks.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, it's an issue that is going to cost us a lot
of money, and some of that isdue to the agency and some of
that, quite frankly, is due tous mismanaging that agency
relationship, and so I thinkthat's really where I want to
place my emphasis.
There's really no sense inplacing the emphasis on the
agency themselves, because I'mnot going to divulge the name
(01:08):
anyways, I'm not going to throwthem under the bus and also,
some agencies don't work outwell for one brand but work
great for another brand.
Sometimes it just depends onthe type of brand that you are,
the customer avatar you'reshooting at.
So that's probably theunimportant piece.
The important piece, I think,for me is that our agency
relationship did go reallysideways.
(01:29):
We're going to lose a lot ofmoney over it and, at the end of
the day, I think most of itcomes down to that the agency.
So, just to put this inperspective, we brought on an
Amazon account management agency, so a full service agency to
(01:49):
manage really the entire Amazonaccount, the idea being that we
felt that we had really, we'llsay, pulled a lot of the levers
that we really thought that wecould pull on Amazon, and so we
wanted to start focusing on thelevers that we could start
pulling off of Amazon, which notonly would help us diversify,
(02:10):
but also that our expectationand that still proves to be the
case is that our externalefforts would translate to
better performance on Amazonfrom external traffic and
branded search and things likethat which we've talked about.
I still think those things aretrue and we're still working on
that.
But because all of our, becausewe were having to put so much
(02:35):
emphasis and so much focus onour Amazon account, because
we're a fairly small team, itjust was proving difficult to do
everything that we knew wereally should be doing
externally.
So we brought on an agency tomanage the Amazon account that
was be doing externally.
So we brought on an agency tomanage the Amazon account.
That was.
In a lot of ways, it was reallyokay refresh some things.
You know, take a look in thebackend.
You know it hasn't gotten theattention that it needs.
It could use a refresh.
But mostly, you know we wantyou to manage what we have.
(02:59):
Like, if you can improve on it,great.
But ultimately our main thingwas just manage it, just
maintain what we have.
We'll do this thing over here.
It'll trickle over, everythingwill be good, and the problem
with that is was that ourperspective was, once we feel
comfortable that they know whatthey're doing and they
understand our brand, we can putall of our emphasis over here
(03:21):
and ignore that side.
And that was a massive mistake,because we weren't tracking
some really important KPIs thatwe should have been monitoring
all along to make sure that theywere doing the work that we
really wanted them to do, and asa result, we ended up in a
really rough spot with inventorythis year.
That's going to cost a lot ofmoney.
It just turned out to be at theabsolute wrong time, because it
(03:44):
was just prior to the tariffchange, and so then we couldn't
bring the inventory over fromChina, and so it just kind of
snowballed into something muchbigger.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah.
So a couple of thoughts thereand just, and for listeners that
may not be aware, I run anagency specifically for brands
within the Amazon channel, so Ithink this is a wonderful topic
to have from both those sides offrom a brand and then also from
an agency perspective and sowhat I would say?
(04:14):
That kind of clicks in my brain, just based on what you
described and whether, again, agood agency and this is
something that we started toincorporate more and more and
getting better at which is, inthat onboarding phase of really
talking with the brand, to say,hey, what does what does a big,
(04:39):
what does winning look like?
So for some brands, that is,hey, we want to hit this sales
threshold, or we want to doubleyou know revenue, or we want to
double profits, you know,whatever it happens to be In
your case, that would have beenhey, if you can improve things,
that's fantastic.
But really winning looks likesteady state of making sure that
there's plenty of inventory forthe products that we have in
FBA, that things are gettingfulfilled, that the listings are
(05:00):
getting it sounds like they'regetting looked at on a regular
basis, that ads are getting youknow, it sounds like are getting
looked at on a regular basis.
The ads are getting, you know,optimized on a regular basis and
that kind of blocking andtackling of Amazon is being
taken care of and maintained sothat way you can focus on other
channels.
So I think that's somethingreally important, that again,
you know, something that we'vestarted to put a lot more
(05:21):
emphasis in with the clientsthat we're bringing on board of
what does winning look like.
And obviously, as an agency,one of the things that we do is
not only try to get the answerto that question but then look
at, you know, how can we getthem that win, or even you know,
the first kind of big steptowards that win as quickly as
possible.
(05:41):
So that way, you know the brandis getting value out of the
relationship.
So anybody listening out there,if you're a brand and you're
looking for, you know, a newAmazon agency, if they don't ask
you that question or somethingsimilar to that, I think that
would be a first, you know,maybe red flag with that agency.
But then also, as the brand youknow, I would say you know,
(06:06):
have that as a responsibility onyou as well, as if this is an
agency that you're reallyexcited about working with for
whatever reason, but they don'task that question.
You know, make sure that thatis really clear, upfront, of
what winning looks like and thatthat is put into, you know,
concrete number form, so thatway the agency knows like, hey,
this is what's being expected ofus.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
You're muted man.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
If we take a little bit of a step back, I think for
now I have kind of a uniqueexperience in that I work with
John at the agency and I alsowork with Mike from from the
brand side and from from my.
I think a lot of the clientsthat we work with at First North
are brand spanking new onAmazon, meaning they don't
(06:52):
understand even the KPIs to payattention to.
For them, they're justunderstanding what ACOS is and
what Tacos is and that kind ofstuff.
So for me, I think what'simportant for brands, especially
newer brands that are justlaunching, are really
understanding your business andunderstanding your numbers.
(07:12):
I know that they say that onShark Tank a lot, but
understanding what the metricsare that are important to your
business and being able to havea conversation with your agency
at the very beginning of that issuper important.
And I think from a ProTuffstandpoint, I think that not
only knowing the KPIs that areimportant, but brand manager
tended to give a little bit toomuch trust in that I wasn't
(07:48):
paying attention to the thingsthat they were supposed to be
managing, and I think that Ithink that I think that every
brand needs to be payingattention, regardless of if
you're with an agency or not.
There's certain things,especially inventory.
I mean, inventory is a very,very important thing obviously,
especially when you're headinginto your busy season, and it
was something that I, as brandmanager, trusted a little bit
(08:09):
too much in that that they weregoing to manage that correctly.
So I think that, first of all,understanding from a brand
standpoint I think it's a badidea to just outsource to an
agency right at the verybeginning of starting of your
Amazon journey, because I thinkthat you have to understand the
inner workings of your businessbefore you hand off the reins
and then not pay attention towhat's going on.
(08:31):
But on top of understanding yourbusiness and understanding the
KPIs that matter, I think thatthere's still some level of
involvement that the brand hasto have in making sure that the
KPIs are going in the rightdirection, over and above a
weekly meeting, because I mean,you can meet with them weekly
but if you're not actuallypaying attention, you know, one
of the challenges that we had inthe beginning was the reporting
(08:52):
wasn't great from the agencythat we were, and so that kind
of hid a lot of the KPIs thatshould have been important and
you know some of them were easyto suss out.
Like you know, we pay attentionto ad spend and ACOS and tacos
and things like that, but thingsthat kind of that fly under the
radar and that kind of situnderneath the surface like
inventory I mean, especiallywhen you're dealing with a brand
(09:14):
that you know is doing multiplemillions of dollars a year,
like there's a lot of shipmentsthat come over from China, and
if you miss even a week or aweek and a half of shipments,
which is actually what happenedin our case, it sets off this
domino effect of things thatthen, especially when you add in
tariffs to the situation andall these other external factors
.
So I think, bottom line, firstof all, I think you need to
(09:35):
understand your business morethan just handing it off to an
agency in the beginning.
But also there's a lot of KPIsthat you have to be paying
attention to as thatrelationship progresses, just so
that you are more in the knowthan just a weekly meeting or a
monthly meeting with your agencyhead.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, I think too is you know, when you dial in on
the KPI issue, there's the easyones.
You know ACOS and TACOS or ROAS, however you want to pay
attention to it, but at the endof the day, even those aren't
really telling you the fullpicture of what you really need
(10:14):
to be looking at.
You know, in terms of, maybe,your contribution margin at, say
, you know CM2 or CM3, andunderstanding what those numbers
look like and, quite frankly,and understanding what those
numbers look like and quitefrankly, especially if it's an
agency that's managing more thanjust ads or more than just this
here, like if they're more of afull service agency, well then
(10:40):
they have a little bit more of aresponsibility to be hitting
those, we'll say, more eagle eyeview type KPIs rather than the
more detailed ones such as ACOSor something.
I also think one of the thingsthat we kind of messed up in
this.
We'll focus specifically on PPC, since a lot of Amazon brands
will farm out PPC to an agencyand that is and that is.
(11:01):
You can hide a lot, especiallyif your PPC agency is not
properly separating out brandedterms from unbranded terms.
So when they're creatingcampaigns within your PPC
(11:21):
account, you should be lookingat the structure of those
accounts.
You should be taking a peekevery week or two or something
and just kind of getting insideof the campaigns and seeing what
keywords are they putting inthere?
What is the strategy?
Make sure that you're talkingto the company and don't just
say, hey, manage my PPC, butfind out from them what is the
strategy behind how they set upcampaigns and how they set up ad
(11:43):
groups and how they decide onbidding and things like that.
Because, first of all, if theycan't really talk strategy with
you in a way that you canunderstand, then they probably
don't understand what they'redoing as well as they ought to.
But what we noticed and this wasway after the fact,
unfortunately was we got insideof our campaigns and found
(12:04):
branded and unbranded terms wereall lumped together in the same
campaigns everywhere.
Well, what happens with that?
If you start looking at acampaign, even at a campaign
level, if you don't gounderneath that, if you're just
looking at each campaign andyou're looking at the numbers,
you could look at a lot of thesecampaigns and see, you know,
hey, my ROAS looks pretty good,or whatever.
And then if you look, you know,on a, you know, hey, my ROAS
(12:30):
looks pretty good or whatever.
And then if you look, you knowon a, you know the overall
account, you know you can alsosee ROAS numbers that might look
relatively decent.
But the problem is, if you digdeeper you'll find that you're
wasting a lot of money on a lotof terms, that it's being hidden
because the ROAS for a brandedkeyword is so much higher and so
it was throwing off all of ournumbers.
We couldn't separate out whatwas branded search and how is it
performing, you know, versusnon-branded and new to brand and
that sort of thing, and so itwas really kind of just an
(12:51):
absolute mess on the PPC side.
So, thinking through what arethe things that we should
actually pay attention to andprobably figuring that stuff out
before you hire the agency,maybe using chat, gpt and saying
look, we're looking at hiringan agency to manage X, y, z.
We would like to know what arethe things that we should be
monitoring along the way to makesure that agency is doing what
(13:13):
we actually want them to do andmoving toward the goals that
we're wanting to achieve.
And I would also argue you'redoing the agency a disservice if
you don't do that Now.
As John said.
I think they should do that.
The agency should come to youand kind of have an idea of what
are some of those KPIs andgoals that we can talk through
(13:33):
with the brand and make surethat we have these kind of set
so that we know what we'reaiming at.
But if the agency doesn't haveanything to aim at, then on the
one hand they could be reallybad and you won't know it.
Then you know, on the one handthey could be really bad and you
won't know it.
On the other hand they couldalso be really good and you
won't know it because you don'thave a KPI to compare against.
So it's a losing scenario, Ithink, for both the brand and
the agency when you haven'toutlined those goals and target
(13:56):
KPIs and whatnot.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Yeah, and I think you know what you brought up there
is so important, especiallyaround ACOS and ROAS.
So I think this is one of thosethings that I don't, that I
feel like can't be said enoughand isn't communicated as often
as it should be.
And that's one of the reasonswhy, at least for Amazon, and
why Amazon is such a differentplatform, why I'm not a big fan
(14:20):
of ACOS or ROAS, and that'sbecause I feel like I could take
any account and if you give mean ACOS goal, I can hit your
ACOS goal.
The only issue is you know whatis going to be, you know your
actual, you know revenue ad fromthat that you're going to get
from.
You know from ad sales.
(14:42):
So if you said, hey, john, Iwant a 10% ACOS, well, like you
talked about, I mean you providea perfect example of that where
you can say, okay, well, if Itarget all branded terms
technically and you've got agood brand technically, I've hit
a 10% ACOS, but it may not getyou where you want to go as far
as the brand is concerned,because and that's where you
(15:09):
have to do some testing Arethose sales that I would have
gotten anyway?
What percentage?
And there's different ways thatyou can kind of suss that data
out, looking at search queryreports and that type of stuff.
Because if I turn off all theads and I'm getting all the
sales for my branded terms, thenit doesn't make sense for me to
advertise on those.
So using those types of orhaving that understanding, and
then the other thing is is thatyou know there's other
(15:30):
strategies, you know, with lowbids and that type of stuff that
you can get, you know kind ofincremental sales, but at the
end of the day, if it doesn'tdrive the brand forward, because
there's so much relationshipbetween your ad sales and your
organic ranking that thosethings really have to be viewed
together, which makes it verydifferent from advertising on
Meta or Google, for example.
(15:51):
And so that's where when we'relooking at clients and again as
Matt mentioned, every client's alittle bit different and what
really matters is what theirgoals are.
But that's where I think one ofthe biggest numbers that we
look at is total advertised costof sales.
So you can see what is thatimpact, not only on my sales,
but what impact is that havingon the organic side of things?
(16:12):
And then really looking at whatthe margins look like.
So that's kind of as an accountlevel.
But then, as you mentioned, mike, you have to be looking at also
down to the product level ofwhat's my net profit
contribution, because that'swhere pricing strategies and
that type of stuff, which is alever that I think brand owners
don't use enough in order toreally do the math on.
(16:34):
Okay, well, if I raise theprice by 20%, my conversion rate
only goes down by 10%.
I've actually net profitcontribution made progress.
Or in the reverse, where I cutmy price by 10% but my volume
goes up by 20%.
There's a lot of math thatneeds to happen there at the
(16:54):
product level in order to findwhere those sweet spots are, and
if you're not paying attention,and I would say that you
probably need a couple of KPIsPersonally, I like revenue and
tacos.
I think those are two very bigat the account level metrics
that are really hard to fudge.
Is it possible?
Yes, but much harder.
(17:15):
And then at the product level,really looking at what is that
net profit contribution?
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I think one of the more important things and to be
honest I don't know that I everhad a conversation with the
agency that we're talking aboutabout organic rank and how
advertising and everything elsethat we were doing affect that.
You know we went out of stockon a skew.
How does that affect or affectorganic rank?
You know, for me I ACOS is sucha short sighted metric I don't
(17:42):
really pay attention.
I don't even remember the lasttime I looked at ACOS in the
accounts that I managed, becausetacos, like you said, john, is
a much more indicative metric ofhow advertising is affecting
the overall business, which, inmy opinion, that's the goal.
The goal of advertising is toincrease my organic rank for the
keywords that matter.
Like that.
That's how I look atadvertising and if you're only
(18:03):
looking at a cost, then it'syou're.
You're missing out on so muchopportunity to increase volume
on keywords that you're going toend up getting to the top of
page one and getting free saleson it.
It was never a conversationthat I had.
Like I never saw any sort ofreport on these are the keywords
that we're targeting.
These are the ones that we're alittle bit more aggressive on.
So it has a cost is a littlebit higher on that, but this is
(18:27):
how our organic rank on thiskeyword has increased over time.
And this is the search buyingfor that keyword.
I think that that was reallymissing from the conversations
with the agency.
That really kind of made thingsa little bit weird for me, in
that what is our goal?
Is our goal just to raise adspend?
It is the top of our season,but what is the result of that?
(18:49):
And also, I think, answeringthe question and looking at the
data of our season, but like,what is the?
What is the result of that?
And also, I think, answeringthe question and looking at the
data of like price changes John,you mentioned price being a big
lever and it's something thatwe're testing right now and
understanding what it does andlooking at the data and
understanding not just like Iraised my spend or, you know, my
ACOS went down, but like whatwas the overall goal and how did
that affect my organic rank.
That was really something thatI felt like was missing from the
(19:10):
conversations that I had withthe agency.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah, I think again, it was kind of briefly mentioned
earlier too, but we'rementioning all of these things
that we saw with this agency andI think the biggest takeaway
for me, beyond the make sureyou're actually monitoring the
KPIs that you care about is youreally have to be careful how
(19:40):
much grace you give to an agencyin terms of how long you're
going to wait to really say,look, either this issue has to
be addressed kind of immediatelyand hopefully you've dealt with
that.
You know, up until then, youknow you haven't just waited
until it becomes a massive issue.
But you know, either this getsaddressed or we're going to have
(20:05):
to move a different direction.
And some of those issues we sawkind of earlier on, because we
knew the guys that owned theagency and felt pretty
comfortable in what they weretrying to create.
We just believed they weregoing to right the ship right,
and I think that was problematic.
We gave way too much leeway onthat and didn't really say, look
(20:26):
, this has to be fixed and ithas to be fixed immediately.
Because if, in order for us toknow that you're moving us in
the right direction, we need toknow these things, we need to
understand what is the actualstrategy behind what you're
doing and the changes thatyou're making and those sort of
things.
And we didn't do that, and sothat's on us, and I think that
every brand owner needs to payattention to that and make sure
(20:47):
that they're addressing it andnot just kicking the can down
the road, so to speak, becauseit's easy to do that right, like
you don't want to have to tryto find another agency and
you've already kind of offloadeda lot of things to that agency,
and so the people on your teamare now doing different roles or
taking care of different things, and as soon as you drop that
agency, if you don't have areplacement for them, well then
(21:08):
all of these people.
Now you have to change yourwhole structure again.
So it's a it's a really kind ofdifficult decision to make, and
so I think it's probably easyto just kind of kick that can
and hope that that it's going toturn around.
You can't afford to do that.
We did that and we're going topay for it.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Yeah, I think that's the other thing that I would say
to brand owners you know thatare like, hey, I'm gonna, you
know, find you know a PPC personfrom you know Pakistan or
whatever.
And that's not to say that youknow there are diamonds in the
rough of people from you knowPakistan and India who are
fantastic, but for every youknow good one, there's probably
a thousand bad ones.
(21:45):
And really looking at what thatopportunity cost is Because
it's not necessarily, yeah, youmight pay an agency that's based
here in the US or somebody atthe end of the day that knows
what they're doing, a heck of alot more.
But assuming that they're doingtheir job, your downside risk
(22:06):
is a lot less than if you'repaying somebody $2 an hour, $4
an hour in Pakistan or India toyou know manage your you know 10
or $20,000 in ad spend.
You know you can very easilymake up that, that opportunity
cost difference If you knowthey're barely competent at it
(22:29):
at $4 an hour versus somebodywho knows what they're doing.
You know, at $50 an hour You'remuted again, matt.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
My cat is, I have to mute her for my cat.
But the challenge with that andagain, this is nothing against
anybody from particularcountries, but the challenge
with that is that I think thatthe genesis of one of these
things is that there's a big,giant Facebook group with a
whole bunch of people from aspecific country that want to be
VAs and they've gone throughthis training.
(22:58):
There's hundreds of thousandsof people in this group.
They've gone through thistraining and they've learned not
so great ways to marketthemselves as virtual assistants
, as Amazon analysts let's callthem assistants, as Amazon
analysts, let's call them.
And the challenge is that whenyou work with some of these
agencies there are some agenciesout there that employ a whole
bunch of these VAs, let's callthem that aren't necessarily
(23:21):
trained on how to manage anaccount that's spending hundreds
of thousands of dollars a month, but that might not necessarily
be all of that apparent to you,because your communication with
the agency is with the owner orthe sales guy or, you know,
maybe an account manager.
So I think that's another thing,and and I don't I don't want to
say that the I feel like thewool was pulled over our eyes,
(23:44):
because I don't feel like that.
I do know, though, that ouraccount manager with this
particular agency, or the personthat was pulling the levers
inside of the campaigns, atleast for a time, was an
overseas person.
That was the one that wasputting together these reports
for us, and I think I mentionedthat the reports weren't all
that great that we were gettingfrom them, and it was very
(24:05):
obvious that this person was avery low level type of a PPC
analyst that was only payingattention to a few metrics and
didn't really understand whatwas going on behind the scenes.
So that's one thing that I willthrow out there as a caution.
I think it's important toreally, when you're working with
an agency, really understandingthe expertise level of the
person that's actually pushingthe buttons and pulling the
(24:27):
levers in the account, because Ifeel like that was kind of
happening in our account, atleast for a little bit.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Well, and like you said earlier, matt, you know
that if you don't alreadyunderstand, at least at a bird's
eye level how well, let's justtake PPC, since we're on that
topic If you don't actuallyunderstand the, let's say,
current most accepted strategiesand I'm not going to say
(24:54):
strategy because you know thereare agencies who do things
different from one another andthere's some things that those
strategies are, why they employthem and at least the basic
foundational aspects of how theyemploy them then you will not
(25:18):
be able to intelligently havethose conversations with an
agency that you hire and it willbe really easy for them to pull
the wool over your eyes or not.
You know, maybe they're just notthat great and they think
they're better than they are,and you don't know any different
.
And so between the two of you,it's blind leading the blind,
(25:38):
right, or they are relativelygood at what they do, but they
realize they can just kind ofphone it in because you have no
idea and they can just meet theACOS goal that you gave them or
whatever, and you're going to behappy because you don't know
what's going on.
So you really do need to takesome time before you're going to
hire an agency to do anythingin your business to make sure
(26:01):
you at least understand thatstuff at kind of a foundational
level, so you can have thatintelligent conversation, so you
can know what kind of KPIs youshould be monitoring to make
sure they know what they'redoing.
So you know what the campaignstructure should look like, so
you can take a peek once in awhile and make sure that is
actually what they're doing.
You know that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, and I would really encourage brands you know
to talk to at least three tofive agencies and really get
particular about and I think youguys have already brought it up
and I just wanna double clickon it which is really getting
into the nitty gritty of howthey would apply their
strategies or their principles.
And we're talking a lot aboutads, but the same thing could be
(26:43):
said for listing, optimization,for fixing catalog issues, for
inventory.
Hey, from step one to step 10,what is your process?
And having them walk throughtheir you know what's their
regular process and how wouldthey apply to your brand.
And really, the more detailedthat that process is and you
(27:04):
know, again, give it the commonsense test If those you know
steps make sense to you.
You know if they're giving themore detailed that process is
typically, and give it thecommon sense test if those steps
make sense to you.
If they're giving it in moredetail that process is typically
, the better thought out it is,the more experienced they're
going to be with working withbrands like you.
Now, the other thing that Iwould add is that that's where
(27:26):
talking to three to fiveagencies is helpful, and maybe
even more depending on yourlevel of experience.
If you don't know hardlyanything about you know PPC, I'd
probably, you know, I wouldrecommend brands talk to five to
seven agencies, because whatyou'll start to see is that once
you've done you know, you'vetalked to a few of them you're
going to see a lot of differentthings that rhyme and you're
(27:48):
going to get a much better feelfor who knows what they're
talking about and who's justkind of you know, doing some
hand waving and saying, hey, weoptimize your PPC and we, you
know, negate keywords to get ridof ads.
You know wasted ad spend, youknow, and kind of these magic
words of you know we're nevergoing to have wasted ad spend.
(28:08):
Well, ok, so you're going totell me that every one of your
clicks is going to convert.
I'd love to see that.
So you know I think that'sreally what it boils down to is
is that, depending on your levelof experience, is going to
depend on the number of you knowagencies that you probably need
to interview before you findthat one that's going to do a
good job for you and going to bea good fit for your brand.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Yeah, I think what you'll also find out in that
interview process, which I thinkis important, is how well and I
think it's important to askthis question I've been in sales
and the agency world for manyyears and I used to hate this
question because it ended uprequiring me to do a whole lot
more.
And it's when brands want to askyou to meet the person that is
(29:01):
actually going to be managingthe account.
And I think that I've actuallybeen with agencies in the past,
as in the sales, that it almostand it felt a little bit dirty
to me because it was almost likea bait and switch where it was
a very specific agency who,depending on the level of ad
spend, you would either go withthe A ad team or the B ad team
(29:22):
and the person didn't know whichad team they were going to, and
it was always they were alwaystalking to the A team in the
meetings and I didn't love that,especially the brands that you
know were either new or weren'tat the revenue levels that some
of the bigger brands that weworked with it just it, it.
It felt it felt not so great tome.
So I think I thinkunderstanding who the person is
(29:43):
that you're going to becontacting with and meeting that
person in the beginning.
I think having some sort oflevel of rapport with the person
that you're going to be workingwith on a regular basis is
important, and I don't I don'thate that question anymore.
I don't hate asking thequestion of can I meet the
person of who I'm going toactually be working with?
I think that's important andyou know, being being on the
other side of thoserelationships now.
(30:04):
Now I really understand whybrand owners wanted to do that
and I think it's an importantstep.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Well, I think the other thing I want to make sure
that we also double click on iswhat you brought up, mike, as
far as like, how much grace doyou give to an agency, and I
think one of those this is oneof those things where having a
regular cadence for meetings andthat type of stuff is important
, and also making sure thatyou're focusing on that KPI and
really tracking that and, youknow, talking with that agency
(30:30):
and saying, okay, this is wherewe want this KPI to be, what is
realistic that we could have bynext week or two weeks from now.
You know what does that looklike.
So that way you're setting someclear milestones.
Because, again, as you know, anagency owner, I've been on the
other end of it where somebody'slike, hey, I want to triple my
sales this month, and it's like,okay, well, do you want to
(30:51):
triple your ad budget?
You know.
So, having those types ofdiscussions of like, hey, what's
realistic that we canaccomplish in a week, two weeks,
a month, and then you know,based on what your goal is.
So that way you're gettingagreements between the brand and
the agency.
That's where I see it mostsuccessful of like, hey, this is
what the milestone next weekshould look like and what a
(31:12):
milestone two weeks should looklike, and really checking in on
those milestones, cause I thinkyou know what you know we've
experienced with that is, ifit's super clear, we're going to
do everything we in our powerin order to meet or exceed that
milestone, and it makes it a loteasier for prioritizing.
Hey, what does this?
What does this brand care about?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Yeah, I it also.
It also makes me think, john,that so, okay, yes, you have,
you know you're bringing anagency on.
Hopefully you've taken the timeahead of that to at least lay
down what you think arereasonable goals.
Say, you know, for you know sixmonths, you know three months,
maybe 12 months, you knowwhatever.
(31:53):
But also, you know youmentioned this early in the
conversation and that was youknow, and you mentioned it more
from the agency side, but I alsothink it's just as valuable
from the brand side, and that iswhat are some things that need
to be done that would be underthe responsibility of this
(32:14):
agency, that would have asignificant impact and that you
can generally say should be ableto be accomplished in a week or
two or maybe four.
Right, some of those thingsthat you can say that you get a
chance to evaluate more early on.
(32:34):
So you set a goal and say, look, in two weeks time these things
should be finished, right, itdoesn't really have anything
specifically to do with, say,performance indicators.
You know, like you know, cm3 orACOS or tacos and things like
that, but more so like, didthese things get done?
And then being able to evaluatehow did it get done, like, for
(32:55):
instance, a listing refreshMaybe it's just, it's not images
, it's just the text content andmaybe keyword optimization and
things like that, and saying,hey look, in two weeks we'd like
to have these power minilistings all refreshed with new
content, updated keyword focusand optimization.
And then, when that's done, I'dlike to have a report of what
(33:16):
was done, why focus andoptimization.
And then, when that's done, I'dlike to have a report of what
was done, why it was done.
And then I get to evaluate itand kind of look, does it read
well, does it, you know?
Does it look like it'sgibberish?
And that it was written bysomebody overseas whose English
is the second language, you know, and it gives you something to
kind of hang your hat on and say, okay, well, step one, you know
they did that, they did it well, it seems correct.
(33:36):
Let's move forward.
I do have a question for you,though, john, because one of the
things that for a long time,I've really kind of looked at as
being I don't know in myopinion, kind of a standard way
to operate, and I think thatpiece that I just mentioned is
one that I haven't done verywell and I think it's something
that we should do, kind ofmoving forward, but in a larger
(33:57):
scale.
When you bring on an agency, howlong do you believe that it
makes sense to say, okay, youknow, unless something goes
egregiously wrong, we're givingyou two months or three months,
and it probably depends a littlebit on what type of agency is
it and what do you want them todo and how quickly should they
(34:20):
be able to ramp something up?
But, like for me, when I say,okay, I'm going to have somebody
new handle PPC, right, well,you've got to take it from
whatever the campaign structurewas before and you've got to
transition that potentially towhatever you want the campaign
structure to be.
And there's this period overwhich you can't just turn off
everything that was alreadythere, but you also can't just
(34:41):
turn on everything that you want.
So what's the length of thatprocess?
And you have to give them timeto be able to make that
transition, to start moving thenumbers in the right direction,
to start getting that campaignset up, optimized, to get enough
history behind the campaignsthat they start producing better
.
So I think that's key that inmost cases, my guess would be if
(35:03):
you're hiring on an agency andyou're going to make an
evaluation in a month whether tokeep them, it better be only
like okay, as long as nothingegregious happens, we'll keep
going.
But if something really goesoff the rails, you know a month
later I'm going to terminatethis and move on.
What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Because I feel like that's an important piece of
this, you know, for you knowbrands that are seven figures,
plus there's probably, you know,there's usually years worth of
campaign history.
I'll give you one you know, mypersonal red flag is any agency
(35:44):
that says, hey, we're just goingto turn off all the ads that
you currently have running,we're going to create all new
accounts, run the otherdirection.
So I will say that.
That said, you know mostagencies that are good at what
they do at this point that's notgoing to be their approach.
They're going to do exactlywhat you're talking about, which
is, hey, we're going to have toramp up some new campaigns,
then we're going to have tomodify the campaigns that are
currently in existence becausewe want to take advantage of
(36:06):
that history that's alreadythere and what's already working
.
And so I think that's where itkind of circles back to what you
were talking about earlier,which is starting by measuring
inputs instead of outputs.
So I know, ultimately, thereare certain results that we all
want to get out of whether it'sads or a specific portion of the
business, and then ultimatelyout of the business as a whole
(36:29):
and really what it starts whenyou're starting that
relationship, I think, measuringthose inputs and having that
discussion of the agency of likehey, what are the inputs that
we should see in this first weekas we onboard?
What are the inputs we shouldsee in the first two to three
weeks?
And then, what are those inputsthat we should see in the first
(36:49):
month or two inputs?
What I would say is is thatgenerally, you know, I would
give you know them two to threemonths before you really start
seeing the, you start measuringthe results, end of it, and
really in those first couple ofmonths, really focus on
measuring those inputs.
Now, as you said, mike, ifthere's something that goes
(37:10):
completely off the rails, youknow, then that's kind of a
different conversation of youknow where they make a massive
mistake, that's, you know,costing you a huge amount of
money.
Like you know, it's hard togive grace for something like
that.
That said, I think thosesituations are few and far
between.
I think most brands are kind ofin that position that you were
(37:32):
talking about of like hey, youknow, I I want to hand this off
to this agency, but I don't knowhow to measure them in those
first couple of months, to knowis it because it's the
transition or is it becausethey're just not that good.
And so that's where I think, inthose first couple of months,
you know, and I would say two tothree months, especially with
you know, seven figure plusbrand, we're really measuring
(37:53):
those inputs and again thereshould be a very clear
discussion about hey, here's theinputs that we're going to be
working on and what thattimeline looks like, so that way
you can hold them accountableto those inputs.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
I actually really liked the input versus output.
You know just just that moniker, you know just like labeling it
Okay, we're measuring inputsfor the first couple of months,
then we're shifting to measuringoutputs.
Maybe over that third monthwe're transitioning to measuring
outputs by the time you'rereaching, you know, that month
three mark.
You know you should, for themost part, be measuring outputs.
(38:26):
You know like they should besolidified enough in your
account where that, that's whereyour focus should be able to be
.
So I really kind of liked thatidea, and I would imagine that
most brands are probably likemyself, who were very output
oriented but realized we can'treally measure output so much
until we get two or three monthsin, and so then no measurement
(38:47):
happens at all.
There's really no seriousevaluation that's being made in
that period, because you'regiving them grace.
Being able to measure thoseinputs, I think, is a really
good way to make sure you'restill moving in the right
direction.
And then the only other thingthat I would say is that, okay,
if you're setting out inputs,make sure that the inputs that
they tell you they're going todo and that you're going to
measure make sense to you as toare they actually going to get
(39:11):
us to the outputs that we'relooking for, like.
If those inputs don't have anydirect impact on the outputs
that we've said we want well,then that in and of itself
doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, 100%, and I mean, I think that's really what
it boils down to is.
And the other thing that I wouldsay is that give yourself that
two to three month period ofevaluation for that agency so it
becomes delegation rather thanabdication.
I'm not saying that that's whathappened in your case, mike, but
I do see this a lot and I mean,you know, for us it's, you know
(39:43):
, we, we take, try to take that,you know, very seriously in the
sense of realize that somebrand owners, they just, you
know, they really just want towipe their hands of it, which I
totally understand, especiallywhen you know it's very time
intensive, it's very, you know,knowledge intensive, and they
want to work on other channelsand launching that next new
product and that type of stuff,and that's the reason that they
hire us.
So I'm totally fine with that.
(40:05):
But I would just say, from thebrand perspective, I would
really encourage brands, youknow, to really be very involved
in that first three months tomaking sure that everything is
on track, so that way, you know,it's not as painful of a
process if you're not gettingthe inputs that you think you
(40:26):
should be to eventually get to,you know, those more sales, you
know, a better conversion rate,all those other things that we
all, you know, ultimately wantin order to move the brand
forward.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
I think the only last thing that I would probably add
in this kind of just accrued tome, but I think it's an
important piece, and that isover those first few months,
especially documenting, likedocumenting, what are the
results, you know what.
What are the inputs that theysaid they were going to do?
Did they hit those, you know?
Did they do them on time, right?
(40:58):
What are the outputs that wesaid we were going to reach when
we hit the three month mark?
Have we, you know, have we hitthose milestones you know, like,
and just documenting whetherthey hit it or not, to say this
is why we think they didn't orthis is what actually happened
versus what was supposed tohappen?
(41:18):
Because, realistically, when itcomes time, you know, you know,
you.
You essentially have a journalthen so that you don't forget
any of what happened over thosefirst three months and you can
really evaluate better.
You know at that juncture whereyou're like okay, let's decide
what you know, are we movingforward or aren't?
You have a better you know, youhave more evidence on which to
make those decisions, I think.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Yeah, and I would encourage brands, you know, to
come with that with an even keel, in the sense of, you know,
there's always I'm thinkingabout, you know, some clients
that we've worked with and Matt,you know, probably feels this
way more than I do of where, hey, we've created an amazing new
main image for them, or fortheir, you know, for their
product, and you know we'reworking through the widgets in
(42:00):
order to, you know, get Amazonto actually, not only, you know,
so they approve the image, butfor whatever reason, it's not
showing, like there's alwaysgoing to be like those little
hangups in the system.
So it's not that like that mainimage is live and up and, you
know, running perfectly on thatdate, but more of, was the image
done, was it submitted toAmazon on that date?
(42:21):
And then, you know, inevitablyin a certain portion of those
projects, there's going to besome sort of rework that has to
be done because Amazon didn'tindex it or some little thing
needs to be fixed with it orwhatever.
So, you know, just coming tothat with an even keel and look
at what's also within thatagency's control and your
(42:41):
control, and then what is not,and are they doing those inputs
that are within their control,and if so, that's a really good
sign while at the same timeunderstanding that there are
certain inputs, especially onAmazon.
Whether something goes live ornot, that isn't always in the
brand's control or the agency'scontrol.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
Matt, I'm interested in your thoughts on this.
We're getting a little bit longin the tooth on this episode,
but I think, on that point thatJohn just raised this question
of what is beyond the agency'scontrol, right, I think it's
valuable to make sure that youpay attention to that.
I think it's also valuable topay attention to, I guess, a
recognition of the fact that, asan agency and as a brand, we
(43:25):
should both know that that'slikely going to happen with a
certain percentage.
So what are we setting as thedate?
Like, are we saying, okay, havethe images done by this date,
but we know it might take alittle bit of time to get some
of them approved?
Or are we saying we want imagesapproved, ready, active,
whatever by this, but giving alittle bit of extra room on that
?
But also, I think and this iswhy I'm asking you, matt is in
(43:49):
the sense of sometimes thedelays on the agency side are
related less to what the agencyis doing and also what Amazon is
doing, and more to what is thebrand doing.
Are they responding back toinquiries from the agency?
Are they?
getting the digital assets thatthey need.
Are they those sorts of things?
(44:09):
And making sure that you've gotsomebody who's assigned there
to make sure that when they aska question they get an answer
and they need something, theyget what they need?
And when you decide to makethat evaluation of do we
continue or not, are they doingtheir job or not At least taking
a step back and owning theparts of that process where
maybe, as a brand, you failed,as opposed to the agency?
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Yeah, a hundred percent, that's.
That is 100% right.
I mean, in the end, it is apartnership and I think it's a
mistake to walk away to wipeyour hands of something and hand
it off to an agency for them tomanage all by themselves.
And I think that there's a lotof lessons to be learned from
what happened in this veryspecific instance that we're
(44:54):
talking about.
Obviously, there were things onboth sides there were things on
their side, there were thingson our side that went beyond the
normal amount of time to getthings done, and there were
reasons for all of it.
And I think, treating it morelike a partnership and really
understanding what the strengthsare of the agency and what your
(45:31):
strengths are as the brandowner, the representative of the
brand I that's why I think it'simportant to have a good
rapport with the brand manageror whoever the person is that's
managing the account, becausethe better rapport you have with
them, the more you're going tobe able to have those hard
conversations when somethinggoes awry or something is taking
longer than it should.
So, yeah, I think that's a bigpart of it is treating it like a
(45:55):
partnership, but also having agood rapport with the person
that you're working withdirectly All right.
Well, I think that's a big partof it is treating it like a
partnership, but also having agood rapport with the person
that you're working withdirectly.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
All right, well, I think this is a pretty good
place to wrap for this episode,mike, any last thoughts, now
that you know, as you go throughthis process of you, know maybe
one or two things in the futureyou do differently based on
your experience.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
I really like the idea of measuring inputs in
those first couple of months.
I think that's key and makingsure to determine what inputs
are likely to move you in theright direction, toward being
able to measure appropriateoutputs and whatever those goals
are.
So I really like that.
And then I think the otherpiece of that is really looking
(46:36):
at it as a partnership andrecognizing there is no perfect
agency.
Every single agency out thereis going to have things they're
really good at and some thingsthat maybe they're somewhat good
at right and you have to reallydetermine what those are.
So take some time to evaluatethat.
Decide whether when you hirethat agency, you choose to hire
(46:58):
them only for their corecompetencies and maybe you want
to take care of those otherthings that maybe they're sort
of good at and they could do itfor you.
But maybe you'd be better offcontinuing to manage that
yourself or getting a differentagency to do it.
Because I really think in thebest case scenario, even though
it might be easier to hire oneagency to do a whole bunch of
different things, you may getbetter results from coordinating
(47:21):
between two or three agenciesand just paying them for the
core competency that you knowthey should be really good.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
I think, some great discussion here, so I think this
is a great place to wrap.
Thank you everybody forlistening and we look forward to
having you on another TacticsTuesday.
Welcome to another episode of Brand Forge HQ and
Tactics Tuesday.
Today we're talking aboutsomething that I think is really
important for any brand as itcontinues to grow, which is, you
know, when you bring in anagency or you know some sort of
other vendor, and how you work,especially with an agency that's
managing ads.
We'll talk mostly aboutspecifically on Amazon, but I
(00:21):
think a lot of the discussionhere is going to apply as if
you're you know, we have anagency that's helping you on
Meta or Facebook or TikTok.
A lot of these same principlesare going to apply of how do you
work well with an agency.
And so with that, mike, I'mgoing to turn it over to you,
mike, since I know that you knowthis is something that you've
been working and really thinkingon a lot over the last few
(00:42):
weeks.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, it's an issue that is going to cost us a lot
of money, and some of that isdue to the agency and some of
that, quite frankly, is due tous mismanaging that agency
relationship, and so I thinkthat's really where I want to
place my emphasis.
There's really no sense inplacing the emphasis on the
agency themselves, because I'mnot going to divulge the name
(01:08):
anyways, I'm not going to throwthem under the bus and also,
some agencies don't work outwell for one brand but work
great for another brand.
Sometimes it just depends onthe type of brand that you are,
the customer avatar you'reshooting at.
So that's probably theunimportant piece.
The important piece, I think,for me is that our agency
relationship did go reallysideways.
(01:29):
We're going to lose a lot ofmoney over it and, at the end of
the day, I think most of itcomes down to that the agency.
So, just to put this inperspective, we brought on an
Amazon account management agency, so a full service agency to
(01:49):
manage really the entire Amazonaccount, the idea being that we
felt that we had really, we'llsay, pulled a lot of the levers
that we really thought that wecould pull on Amazon, and so we
wanted to start focusing on thelevers that we could start
pulling off of Amazon, which notonly would help us diversify,
(02:10):
but also that our expectationand that still proves to be the
case is that our externalefforts would translate to
better performance on Amazonfrom external traffic and
branded search and things likethat which we've talked about.
I still think those things aretrue and we're still working on
that.
But because all of our, becausewe were having to put so much
(02:35):
emphasis and so much focus onour Amazon account, because
we're a fairly small team, itjust was proving difficult to do
everything that we knew wereally should be doing
externally.
So we brought on an agency tomanage the Amazon account that
was be doing externally.
So we brought on an agency tomanage the Amazon account.
That was.
In a lot of ways, it was reallyokay refresh some things.
You know, take a look in thebackend.
You know it hasn't gotten theattention that it needs.
It could use a refresh.
But mostly, you know we wantyou to manage what we have.
(02:59):
Like, if you can improve on it,great.
But ultimately our main thingwas just manage it, just
maintain what we have.
We'll do this thing over here.
It'll trickle over, everythingwill be good, and the problem
with that is was that ourperspective was, once we feel
comfortable that they know whatthey're doing and they
understand our brand, we can putall of our emphasis over here
(03:21):
and ignore that side.
And that was a massive mistake,because we weren't tracking
some really important KPIs thatwe should have been monitoring
all along to make sure that theywere doing the work that we
really wanted them to do, and asa result, we ended up in a
really rough spot with inventorythis year.
That's going to cost a lot ofmoney.
It just turned out to be at theabsolute wrong time, because it
(03:44):
was just prior to the tariffchange, and so then we couldn't
bring the inventory over fromChina, and so it just kind of
snowballed into something muchbigger.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah.
So a couple of thoughts thereand just, and for listeners that
may not be aware, I run anagency specifically for brands
within the Amazon channel, so Ithink this is a wonderful topic
to have from both those sides offrom a brand and then also from
an agency perspective and sowhat I would say?
(04:14):
That kind of clicks in my brain, just based on what you
described and whether, again, agood agency and this is
something that we started toincorporate more and more and
getting better at which is, inthat onboarding phase of really
talking with the brand, to say,hey, what does what does a big,
(04:39):
what does winning look like?
So for some brands, that is,hey, we want to hit this sales
threshold, or we want to doubleyou know revenue, or we want to
double profits, you know,whatever it happens to be In
your case, that would have beenhey, if you can improve things,
that's fantastic.
But really winning looks likesteady state of making sure that
there's plenty of inventory forthe products that we have in
FBA, that things are gettingfulfilled, that the listings are
(05:00):
getting it sounds like they'regetting looked at on a regular
basis, that ads are getting youknow, it sounds like are getting
looked at on a regular basis.
The ads are getting, you know,optimized on a regular basis and
that kind of blocking andtackling of Amazon is being
taken care of and maintained sothat way you can focus on other
channels.
So I think that's somethingreally important, that again,
you know, something that we'vestarted to put a lot more
(05:21):
emphasis in with the clientsthat we're bringing on board of
what does winning look like.
And obviously, as an agency,one of the things that we do is
not only try to get the answerto that question but then look
at, you know, how can we getthem that win, or even you know,
the first kind of big steptowards that win as quickly as
possible.
(05:41):
So that way, you know the brandis getting value out of the
relationship.
So anybody listening out there,if you're a brand and you're
looking for, you know, a newAmazon agency, if they don't ask
you that question or somethingsimilar to that, I think that
would be a first, you know,maybe red flag with that agency.
But then also, as the brand youknow, I would say you know,
(06:06):
have that as a responsibility onyou as well, as if this is an
agency that you're reallyexcited about working with for
whatever reason, but they don'task that question.
You know, make sure that thatis really clear, upfront, of
what winning looks like and thatthat is put into, you know,
concrete number form, so thatway the agency knows like, hey,
this is what's being expected ofus.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
You're muted man.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
If we take a little bit of a step back, I think for
now I have kind of a uniqueexperience in that I work with
John at the agency and I alsowork with Mike from from the
brand side and from from my.
I think a lot of the clientsthat we work with at First North
are brand spanking new onAmazon, meaning they don't
(06:52):
understand even the KPIs to payattention to.
For them, they're justunderstanding what ACOS is and
what Tacos is and that kind ofstuff.
So for me, I think what'simportant for brands, especially
newer brands that are justlaunching, are really
understanding your business andunderstanding your numbers.
(07:12):
I know that they say that onShark Tank a lot, but
understanding what the metricsare that are important to your
business and being able to havea conversation with your agency
at the very beginning of that issuper important.
And I think from a ProTuffstandpoint, I think that not
only knowing the KPIs that areimportant, but brand manager
tended to give a little bit toomuch trust in that I wasn't
(07:48):
paying attention to the thingsthat they were supposed to be
managing, and I think that Ithink that I think that every
brand needs to be payingattention, regardless of if
you're with an agency or not.
There's certain things,especially inventory.
I mean, inventory is a very,very important thing obviously,
especially when you're headinginto your busy season, and it
was something that I, as brandmanager, trusted a little bit
(08:09):
too much in that that they weregoing to manage that correctly.
So I think that, first of all,understanding from a brand
standpoint I think it's a badidea to just outsource to an
agency right at the verybeginning of starting of your
Amazon journey, because I thinkthat you have to understand the
inner workings of your businessbefore you hand off the reins
and then not pay attention towhat's going on.
(08:31):
But on top of understanding yourbusiness and understanding the
KPIs that matter, I think thatthere's still some level of
involvement that the brand hasto have in making sure that the
KPIs are going in the rightdirection, over and above a
weekly meeting, because I mean,you can meet with them weekly
but if you're not actuallypaying attention, you know, one
of the challenges that we had inthe beginning was the reporting
(08:52):
wasn't great from the agencythat we were, and so that kind
of hid a lot of the KPIs thatshould have been important and
you know some of them were easyto suss out.
Like you know, we pay attentionto ad spend and ACOS and tacos
and things like that, but thingsthat kind of that fly under the
radar and that kind of situnderneath the surface like
inventory I mean, especiallywhen you're dealing with a brand
(09:14):
that you know is doing multiplemillions of dollars a year,
like there's a lot of shipmentsthat come over from China, and
if you miss even a week or aweek and a half of shipments,
which is actually what happenedin our case, it sets off this
domino effect of things thatthen, especially when you add in
tariffs to the situation andall these other external factors
.
So I think, bottom line, firstof all, I think you need to
(09:35):
understand your business morethan just handing it off to an
agency in the beginning.
But also there's a lot of KPIsthat you have to be paying
attention to as thatrelationship progresses, just so
that you are more in the knowthan just a weekly meeting or a
monthly meeting with your agencyhead.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, I think too is you know, when you dial in on
the KPI issue, there's the easyones.
You know ACOS and TACOS or ROAS, however you want to pay
attention to it, but at the endof the day, even those aren't
really telling you the fullpicture of what you really need
(10:14):
to be looking at.
You know, in terms of, maybe,your contribution margin at, say
, you know CM2 or CM3, andunderstanding what those numbers
look like and, quite frankly,and understanding what those
numbers look like and quitefrankly, especially if it's an
agency that's managing more thanjust ads or more than just this
here, like if they're more of afull service agency, well then
(10:40):
they have a little bit more of aresponsibility to be hitting
those, we'll say, more eagle eyeview type KPIs rather than the
more detailed ones such as ACOSor something.
I also think one of the thingsthat we kind of messed up in
this.
We'll focus specifically on PPC, since a lot of Amazon brands
will farm out PPC to an agencyand that is and that is.
(11:01):
You can hide a lot, especiallyif your PPC agency is not
properly separating out brandedterms from unbranded terms.
So when they're creatingcampaigns within your PPC
(11:21):
account, you should be lookingat the structure of those
accounts.
You should be taking a peekevery week or two or something
and just kind of getting insideof the campaigns and seeing what
keywords are they putting inthere?
What is the strategy?
Make sure that you're talkingto the company and don't just
say, hey, manage my PPC, butfind out from them what is the
strategy behind how they set upcampaigns and how they set up ad
(11:43):
groups and how they decide onbidding and things like that.
Because, first of all, if theycan't really talk strategy with
you in a way that you canunderstand, then they probably
don't understand what they'redoing as well as they ought to.
But what we noticed and this wasway after the fact,
unfortunately was we got insideof our campaigns and found
(12:04):
branded and unbranded terms wereall lumped together in the same
campaigns everywhere.
Well, what happens with that?
If you start looking at acampaign, even at a campaign
level, if you don't gounderneath that, if you're just
looking at each campaign andyou're looking at the numbers,
you could look at a lot of thesecampaigns and see, you know,
hey, my ROAS looks pretty good,or whatever.
And then if you look, you know,on a, you know, hey, my ROAS
(12:30):
looks pretty good or whatever.
And then if you look, you knowon a, you know the overall
account, you know you can alsosee ROAS numbers that might look
relatively decent.
But the problem is, if you digdeeper you'll find that you're
wasting a lot of money on a lotof terms, that it's being hidden
because the ROAS for a brandedkeyword is so much higher and so
it was throwing off all of ournumbers.
We couldn't separate out whatwas branded search and how is it
performing, you know, versusnon-branded and new to brand and
that sort of thing, and so itwas really kind of just an
(12:51):
absolute mess on the PPC side.
So, thinking through what arethe things that we should
actually pay attention to andprobably figuring that stuff out
before you hire the agency,maybe using chat, gpt and saying
look, we're looking at hiringan agency to manage X, y, z.
We would like to know what arethe things that we should be
monitoring along the way to makesure that agency is doing what
(13:13):
we actually want them to do andmoving toward the goals that
we're wanting to achieve.
And I would also argue you'redoing the agency a disservice if
you don't do that Now.
As John said.
I think they should do that.
The agency should come to youand kind of have an idea of what
are some of those KPIs andgoals that we can talk through
(13:33):
with the brand and make surethat we have these kind of set
so that we know what we'reaiming at.
But if the agency doesn't haveanything to aim at, then on the
one hand they could be reallybad and you won't know it.
Then you know, on the one handthey could be really bad and you
won't know it.
On the other hand they couldalso be really good and you
won't know it because you don'thave a KPI to compare against.
So it's a losing scenario, Ithink, for both the brand and
the agency when you haven'toutlined those goals and target
(13:56):
KPIs and whatnot.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Yeah, and I think you know what you brought up there
is so important, especiallyaround ACOS and ROAS.
So I think this is one of thosethings that I don't, that I
feel like can't be said enoughand isn't communicated as often
as it should be.
And that's one of the reasonswhy, at least for Amazon, and
why Amazon is such a differentplatform, why I'm not a big fan
(14:20):
of ACOS or ROAS, and that'sbecause I feel like I could take
any account and if you give mean ACOS goal, I can hit your
ACOS goal.
The only issue is you know whatis going to be, you know your
actual, you know revenue ad fromthat that you're going to get
from.
You know from ad sales.
(14:42):
So if you said, hey, john, Iwant a 10% ACOS, well, like you
talked about, I mean you providea perfect example of that where
you can say, okay, well, if Itarget all branded terms
technically and you've got agood brand technically, I've hit
a 10% ACOS, but it may not getyou where you want to go as far
as the brand is concerned,because and that's where you
(15:09):
have to do some testing Arethose sales that I would have
gotten anyway?
What percentage?
And there's different ways thatyou can kind of suss that data
out, looking at search queryreports and that type of stuff.
Because if I turn off all theads and I'm getting all the
sales for my branded terms, thenit doesn't make sense for me to
advertise on those.
So using those types of orhaving that understanding, and
then the other thing is is thatyou know there's other
(15:30):
strategies, you know, with lowbids and that type of stuff that
you can get, you know kind ofincremental sales, but at the
end of the day, if it doesn'tdrive the brand forward, because
there's so much relationshipbetween your ad sales and your
organic ranking that thosethings really have to be viewed
together, which makes it verydifferent from advertising on
Meta or Google, for example.
(15:51):
And so that's where when we'relooking at clients and again as
Matt mentioned, every client's alittle bit different and what
really matters is what theirgoals are.
But that's where I think one ofthe biggest numbers that we
look at is total advertised costof sales.
So you can see what is thatimpact, not only on my sales,
but what impact is that havingon the organic side of things?
(16:12):
And then really looking at whatthe margins look like.
So that's kind of as an accountlevel.
But then, as you mentioned, mike, you have to be looking at also
down to the product level ofwhat's my net profit
contribution, because that'swhere pricing strategies and
that type of stuff, which is alever that I think brand owners
don't use enough in order toreally do the math on.
(16:34):
Okay, well, if I raise theprice by 20%, my conversion rate
only goes down by 10%.
I've actually net profitcontribution made progress.
Or in the reverse, where I cutmy price by 10% but my volume
goes up by 20%.
There's a lot of math thatneeds to happen there at the
(16:54):
product level in order to findwhere those sweet spots are, and
if you're not paying attention,and I would say that you
probably need a couple of KPIsPersonally, I like revenue and
tacos.
I think those are two very bigat the account level metrics
that are really hard to fudge.
Is it possible?
Yes, but much harder.
(17:15):
And then at the product level,really looking at what is that
net profit contribution?
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I think one of the more important things and to be
honest I don't know that I everhad a conversation with the
agency that we're talking aboutabout organic rank and how
advertising and everything elsethat we were doing affect that.
You know we went out of stockon a skew.
How does that affect or affectorganic rank?
You know, for me I ACOS is sucha short sighted metric I don't
(17:42):
really pay attention.
I don't even remember the lasttime I looked at ACOS in the
accounts that I managed, becausetacos, like you said, john, is
a much more indicative metric ofhow advertising is affecting
the overall business, which, inmy opinion, that's the goal.
The goal of advertising is toincrease my organic rank for the
keywords that matter.
Like that.
That's how I look atadvertising and if you're only
(18:03):
looking at a cost, then it'syou're.
You're missing out on so muchopportunity to increase volume
on keywords that you're going toend up getting to the top of
page one and getting free saleson it.
It was never a conversationthat I had.
Like I never saw any sort ofreport on these are the keywords
that we're targeting.
These are the ones that we're alittle bit more aggressive on.
So it has a cost is a littlebit higher on that, but this is
(18:27):
how our organic rank on thiskeyword has increased over time.
And this is the search buyingfor that keyword.
I think that that was reallymissing from the conversations
with the agency.
That really kind of made thingsa little bit weird for me, in
that what is our goal?
Is our goal just to raise adspend?
It is the top of our season,but what is the result of that?
(18:49):
And also, I think, answeringthe question and looking at the
data of our season, but like,what is the?
What is the result of that?
And also, I think, answeringthe question and looking at the
data of like price changes John,you mentioned price being a big
lever and it's something thatwe're testing right now and
understanding what it does andlooking at the data and
understanding not just like Iraised my spend or, you know, my
ACOS went down, but like whatwas the overall goal and how did
that affect my organic rank.
That was really something thatI felt like was missing from the
(19:10):
conversations that I had withthe agency.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah, I think again, it was kind of briefly mentioned
earlier too, but we'rementioning all of these things
that we saw with this agency andI think the biggest takeaway
for me, beyond the make sureyou're actually monitoring the
KPIs that you care about is youreally have to be careful how
(19:40):
much grace you give to an agencyin terms of how long you're
going to wait to really say,look, either this issue has to
be addressed kind of immediatelyand hopefully you've dealt with
that.
You know, up until then, youknow you haven't just waited
until it becomes a massive issue.
But you know, either this getsaddressed or we're going to have
(20:05):
to move a different direction.
And some of those issues we sawkind of earlier on, because we
knew the guys that owned theagency and felt pretty
comfortable in what they weretrying to create.
We just believed they weregoing to right the ship right,
and I think that was problematic.
We gave way too much leeway onthat and didn't really say, look
(20:26):
, this has to be fixed and ithas to be fixed immediately.
Because if, in order for us toknow that you're moving us in
the right direction, we need toknow these things, we need to
understand what is the actualstrategy behind what you're
doing and the changes thatyou're making and those sort of
things.
And we didn't do that, and sothat's on us, and I think that
every brand owner needs to payattention to that and make sure
(20:47):
that they're addressing it andnot just kicking the can down
the road, so to speak, becauseit's easy to do that right, like
you don't want to have to tryto find another agency and
you've already kind of offloadeda lot of things to that agency,
and so the people on your teamare now doing different roles or
taking care of different things, and as soon as you drop that
agency, if you don't have areplacement for them, well then
(21:08):
all of these people.
Now you have to change yourwhole structure again.
So it's a it's a really kind ofdifficult decision to make, and
so I think it's probably easyto just kind of kick that can
and hope that that it's going toturn around.
You can't afford to do that.
We did that and we're going topay for it.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Yeah, I think that's the other thing that I would say
to brand owners you know thatare like, hey, I'm gonna, you
know, find you know a PPC personfrom you know Pakistan or
whatever.
And that's not to say that youknow there are diamonds in the
rough of people from you knowPakistan and India who are
fantastic, but for every youknow good one, there's probably
a thousand bad ones.
(21:45):
And really looking at what thatopportunity cost is Because
it's not necessarily, yeah, youmight pay an agency that's based
here in the US or somebody atthe end of the day that knows
what they're doing, a heck of alot more.
But assuming that they're doingtheir job, your downside risk
(22:06):
is a lot less than if you'repaying somebody $2 an hour, $4
an hour in Pakistan or India toyou know manage your you know 10
or $20,000 in ad spend.
You know you can very easilymake up that, that opportunity
cost difference If you knowthey're barely competent at it
(22:29):
at $4 an hour versus somebodywho knows what they're doing.
You know, at $50 an hour You'remuted again, matt.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
My cat is, I have to mute her for my cat.
But the challenge with that andagain, this is nothing against
anybody from particularcountries, but the challenge
with that is that I think thatthe genesis of one of these
things is that there's a big,giant Facebook group with a
whole bunch of people from aspecific country that want to be
VAs and they've gone throughthis training.
(22:58):
There's hundreds of thousandsof people in this group.
They've gone through thistraining and they've learned not
so great ways to marketthemselves as virtual assistants
, as Amazon analysts let's callthem assistants, as Amazon
analysts, let's call them.
And the challenge is that whenyou work with some of these
agencies there are some agenciesout there that employ a whole
bunch of these VAs, let's callthem that aren't necessarily
(23:21):
trained on how to manage anaccount that's spending hundreds
of thousands of dollars a month, but that might not necessarily
be all of that apparent to you,because your communication with
the agency is with the owner orthe sales guy or, you know,
maybe an account manager.
So I think that's another thing,and and I don't I don't want to
say that the I feel like thewool was pulled over our eyes,
(23:44):
because I don't feel like that.
I do know, though, that ouraccount manager with this
particular agency, or the personthat was pulling the levers
inside of the campaigns, atleast for a time, was an
overseas person.
That was the one that wasputting together these reports
for us, and I think I mentionedthat the reports weren't all
that great that we were gettingfrom them, and it was very
(24:05):
obvious that this person was avery low level type of a PPC
analyst that was only payingattention to a few metrics and
didn't really understand whatwas going on behind the scenes.
So that's one thing that I willthrow out there as a caution.
I think it's important toreally, when you're working with
an agency, really understandingthe expertise level of the
person that's actually pushingthe buttons and pulling the
(24:27):
levers in the account, because Ifeel like that was kind of
happening in our account, atleast for a little bit.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Well, and like you said earlier, matt, you know
that if you don't alreadyunderstand, at least at a bird's
eye level how well, let's justtake PPC, since we're on that
topic If you don't actuallyunderstand the, let's say,
current most accepted strategiesand I'm not going to say
(24:54):
strategy because you know thereare agencies who do things
different from one another andthere's some things that those
strategies are, why they employthem and at least the basic
foundational aspects of how theyemploy them then you will not
(25:18):
be able to intelligently havethose conversations with an
agency that you hire and it willbe really easy for them to pull
the wool over your eyes or not.
You know, maybe they're just notthat great and they think
they're better than they are,and you don't know any different
.
And so between the two of you,it's blind leading the blind,
(25:38):
right, or they are relativelygood at what they do, but they
realize they can just kind ofphone it in because you have no
idea and they can just meet theACOS goal that you gave them or
whatever, and you're going to behappy because you don't know
what's going on.
So you really do need to takesome time before you're going to
hire an agency to do anythingin your business to make sure
(26:01):
you at least understand thatstuff at kind of a foundational
level, so you can have thatintelligent conversation, so you
can know what kind of KPIs youshould be monitoring to make
sure they know what they'redoing.
So you know what the campaignstructure should look like, so
you can take a peek once in awhile and make sure that is
actually what they're doing.
You know that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, and I would really encourage brands you know
to talk to at least three tofive agencies and really get
particular about and I think youguys have already brought it up
and I just wanna double clickon it which is really getting
into the nitty gritty of howthey would apply their
strategies or their principles.
And we're talking a lot aboutads, but the same thing could be
(26:43):
said for listing, optimization,for fixing catalog issues, for
inventory.
Hey, from step one to step 10,what is your process?
And having them walk throughtheir you know what's their
regular process and how wouldthey apply to your brand.
And really, the more detailedthat that process is and you
(27:04):
know, again, give it the commonsense test If those you know
steps make sense to you.
You know if they're giving themore detailed that process is
typically, and give it thecommon sense test if those steps
make sense to you.
If they're giving it in moredetail that process is typically
, the better thought out it is,the more experienced they're
going to be with working withbrands like you.
Now, the other thing that Iwould add is that that's where
(27:26):
talking to three to fiveagencies is helpful, and maybe
even more depending on yourlevel of experience.
If you don't know hardlyanything about you know PPC, I'd
probably, you know, I wouldrecommend brands talk to five to
seven agencies, because whatyou'll start to see is that once
you've done you know, you'vetalked to a few of them you're
going to see a lot of differentthings that rhyme and you're
(27:48):
going to get a much better feelfor who knows what they're
talking about and who's justkind of you know, doing some
hand waving and saying, hey, weoptimize your PPC and we, you
know, negate keywords to get ridof ads.
You know wasted ad spend, youknow, and kind of these magic
words of you know we're nevergoing to have wasted ad spend.
(28:08):
Well, ok, so you're going totell me that every one of your
clicks is going to convert.
I'd love to see that.
So you know I think that'sreally what it boils down to is
is that, depending on your levelof experience, is going to
depend on the number of you knowagencies that you probably need
to interview before you findthat one that's going to do a
good job for you and going to bea good fit for your brand.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Yeah, I think what you'll also find out in that
interview process, which I thinkis important, is how well and I
think it's important to askthis question I've been in sales
and the agency world for manyyears and I used to hate this
question because it ended uprequiring me to do a whole lot
more.
And it's when brands want to askyou to meet the person that is
(29:01):
actually going to be managingthe account.
And I think that I've actuallybeen with agencies in the past,
as in the sales, that it almostand it felt a little bit dirty
to me because it was almost likea bait and switch where it was
a very specific agency who,depending on the level of ad
spend, you would either go withthe A ad team or the B ad team
(29:22):
and the person didn't know whichad team they were going to, and
it was always they were alwaystalking to the A team in the
meetings and I didn't love that,especially the brands that you
know were either new or weren'tat the revenue levels that some
of the bigger brands that weworked with it just it, it.
It felt it felt not so great tome.
So I think I thinkunderstanding who the person is
(29:43):
that you're going to becontacting with and meeting that
person in the beginning.
I think having some sort oflevel of rapport with the person
that you're going to be workingwith on a regular basis is
important, and I don't I don'thate that question anymore.
I don't hate asking thequestion of can I meet the
person of who I'm going toactually be working with?
I think that's important andyou know, being being on the
other side of thoserelationships now.
(30:04):
Now I really understand whybrand owners wanted to do that
and I think it's an importantstep.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Well, I think the other thing I want to make sure
that we also double click on iswhat you brought up, mike, as
far as like, how much grace doyou give to an agency, and I
think one of those this is oneof those things where having a
regular cadence for meetings andthat type of stuff is important
, and also making sure thatyou're focusing on that KPI and
really tracking that and, youknow, talking with that agency
(30:30):
and saying, okay, this is wherewe want this KPI to be, what is
realistic that we could have bynext week or two weeks from now.
You know what does that looklike.
So that way you're setting someclear milestones.
Because, again, as you know, anagency owner, I've been on the
other end of it where somebody'slike, hey, I want to triple my
sales this month, and it's like,okay, well, do you want to
(30:51):
triple your ad budget?
You know.
So, having those types ofdiscussions of like, hey, what's
realistic that we canaccomplish in a week, two weeks,
a month, and then you know,based on what your goal is.
So that way you're gettingagreements between the brand and
the agency.
That's where I see it mostsuccessful of like, hey, this is
what the milestone next weekshould look like and what a
(31:12):
milestone two weeks should looklike, and really checking in on
those milestones, cause I thinkyou know what you know we've
experienced with that is, ifit's super clear, we're going to
do everything we in our powerin order to meet or exceed that
milestone, and it makes it a loteasier for prioritizing.
Hey, what does this?
What does this brand care about?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Yeah, I it also.
It also makes me think, john,that so, okay, yes, you have,
you know you're bringing anagency on.
Hopefully you've taken the timeahead of that to at least lay
down what you think arereasonable goals.
Say, you know, for you know sixmonths, you know three months,
maybe 12 months, you knowwhatever.
(31:53):
But also, you know youmentioned this early in the
conversation and that was youknow, and you mentioned it more
from the agency side, but I alsothink it's just as valuable
from the brand side, and that iswhat are some things that need
to be done that would be underthe responsibility of this
(32:14):
agency, that would have asignificant impact and that you
can generally say should be ableto be accomplished in a week or
two or maybe four.
Right, some of those thingsthat you can say that you get a
chance to evaluate more early on.
(32:34):
So you set a goal and say, look, in two weeks time these things
should be finished, right, itdoesn't really have anything
specifically to do with, say,performance indicators.
You know, like you know, cm3 orACOS or tacos and things like
that, but more so like, didthese things get done?
And then being able to evaluatehow did it get done, like, for
(32:55):
instance, a listing refreshMaybe it's just, it's not images
, it's just the text content andmaybe keyword optimization and
things like that, and saying,hey look, in two weeks we'd like
to have these power minilistings all refreshed with new
content, updated keyword focusand optimization.
And then, when that's done, I'dlike to have a report of what
(33:16):
was done, why focus andoptimization.
And then, when that's done, I'dlike to have a report of what
was done, why it was done.
And then I get to evaluate itand kind of look, does it read
well, does it, you know?
Does it look like it'sgibberish?
And that it was written bysomebody overseas whose English
is the second language, you know, and it gives you something to
kind of hang your hat on and say, okay, well, step one, you know
they did that, they did it well, it seems correct.
(33:36):
Let's move forward.
I do have a question for you,though, john, because one of the
things that for a long time,I've really kind of looked at as
being I don't know in myopinion, kind of a standard way
to operate, and I think thatpiece that I just mentioned is
one that I haven't done verywell and I think it's something
that we should do, kind ofmoving forward, but in a larger
(33:57):
scale.
When you bring on an agency, howlong do you believe that it
makes sense to say, okay, youknow, unless something goes
egregiously wrong, we're givingyou two months or three months,
and it probably depends a littlebit on what type of agency is
it and what do you want them todo and how quickly should they
(34:20):
be able to ramp something up?
But, like for me, when I say,okay, I'm going to have somebody
new handle PPC, right, well,you've got to take it from
whatever the campaign structurewas before and you've got to
transition that potentially towhatever you want the campaign
structure to be.
And there's this period overwhich you can't just turn off
everything that was alreadythere, but you also can't just
(34:41):
turn on everything that you want.
So what's the length of thatprocess?
And you have to give them timeto be able to make that
transition, to start moving thenumbers in the right direction,
to start getting that campaignset up, optimized, to get enough
history behind the campaignsthat they start producing better
.
So I think that's key that inmost cases, my guess would be if
(35:03):
you're hiring on an agency andyou're going to make an
evaluation in a month whether tokeep them, it better be only
like okay, as long as nothingegregious happens, we'll keep
going.
But if something really goesoff the rails, you know a month
later I'm going to terminatethis and move on.
What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Because I feel like that's an important piece of
this, you know, for you knowbrands that are seven figures,
plus there's probably, you know,there's usually years worth of
campaign history.
I'll give you one you know, mypersonal red flag is any agency
(35:44):
that says, hey, we're just goingto turn off all the ads that
you currently have running,we're going to create all new
accounts, run the otherdirection.
So I will say that.
That said, you know mostagencies that are good at what
they do at this point that's notgoing to be their approach.
They're going to do exactlywhat you're talking about, which
is, hey, we're going to have toramp up some new campaigns,
then we're going to have tomodify the campaigns that are
currently in existence becausewe want to take advantage of
(36:06):
that history that's alreadythere and what's already working
.
And so I think that's where itkind of circles back to what you
were talking about earlier,which is starting by measuring
inputs instead of outputs.
So I know, ultimately, thereare certain results that we all
want to get out of whether it'sads or a specific portion of the
business, and then ultimatelyout of the business as a whole
(36:29):
and really what it starts whenyou're starting that
relationship, I think, measuringthose inputs and having that
discussion of the agency of likehey, what are the inputs that
we should see in this first weekas we onboard?
What are the inputs we shouldsee in the first two to three
weeks?
And then, what are those inputsthat we should see in the first
(36:49):
month or two inputs?
What I would say is is thatgenerally, you know, I would
give you know them two to threemonths before you really start
seeing the, you start measuringthe results, end of it, and
really in those first couple ofmonths, really focus on
measuring those inputs.
Now, as you said, mike, ifthere's something that goes
(37:10):
completely off the rails, youknow, then that's kind of a
different conversation of youknow where they make a massive
mistake, that's, you know,costing you a huge amount of
money.
Like you know, it's hard togive grace for something like
that.
That said, I think thosesituations are few and far
between.
I think most brands are kind ofin that position that you were
(37:32):
talking about of like hey, youknow, I I want to hand this off
to this agency, but I don't knowhow to measure them in those
first couple of months, to knowis it because it's the
transition or is it becausethey're just not that good.
And so that's where I think, inthose first couple of months,
you know, and I would say two tothree months, especially with
you know, seven figure plusbrand, we're really measuring
(37:53):
those inputs and again thereshould be a very clear
discussion about hey, here's theinputs that we're going to be
working on and what thattimeline looks like, so that way
you can hold them accountableto those inputs.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
I actually really liked the input versus output.
You know just just that moniker, you know just like labeling it
Okay, we're measuring inputsfor the first couple of months,
then we're shifting to measuringoutputs.
Maybe over that third monthwe're transitioning to measuring
outputs by the time you'rereaching, you know, that month
three mark.
You know you should, for themost part, be measuring outputs.
(38:26):
You know like they should besolidified enough in your
account where that, that's whereyour focus should be able to be
.
So I really kind of liked thatidea, and I would imagine that
most brands are probably likemyself, who were very output
oriented but realized we can'treally measure output so much
until we get two or three monthsin, and so then no measurement
(38:47):
happens at all.
There's really no seriousevaluation that's being made in
that period, because you'regiving them grace.
Being able to measure thoseinputs, I think, is a really
good way to make sure you'restill moving in the right
direction.
And then the only other thingthat I would say is that, okay,
if you're setting out inputs,make sure that the inputs that
they tell you they're going todo and that you're going to
measure make sense to you as toare they actually going to get
(39:11):
us to the outputs that we'relooking for, like.
If those inputs don't have anydirect impact on the outputs
that we've said we want well,then that in and of itself
doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, 100%, and I mean, I think that's really what
it boils down to is.
And the other thing that I wouldsay is that give yourself that
two to three month period ofevaluation for that agency so it
becomes delegation rather thanabdication.
I'm not saying that that's whathappened in your case, mike, but
I do see this a lot and I mean,you know, for us it's, you know
(39:43):
, we, we take, try to take that,you know, very seriously in the
sense of realize that somebrand owners, they just, you
know, they really just want towipe their hands of it, which I
totally understand, especiallywhen you know it's very time
intensive, it's very, you know,knowledge intensive, and they
want to work on other channelsand launching that next new
product and that type of stuff,and that's the reason that they
hire us.
So I'm totally fine with that.
(40:05):
But I would just say, from thebrand perspective, I would
really encourage brands, youknow, to really be very involved
in that first three months tomaking sure that everything is
on track, so that way, you know,it's not as painful of a
process if you're not gettingthe inputs that you think you
(40:26):
should be to eventually get to,you know, those more sales, you
know, a better conversion rate,all those other things that we
all, you know, ultimately wantin order to move the brand
forward.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
I think the only last thing that I would probably add
in this kind of just accrued tome, but I think it's an
important piece, and that isover those first few months,
especially documenting, likedocumenting, what are the
results, you know what.
What are the inputs that theysaid they were going to do?
Did they hit those, you know?
Did they do them on time, right?
(40:58):
What are the outputs that wesaid we were going to reach when
we hit the three month mark?
Have we, you know, have we hitthose milestones you know, like,
and just documenting whetherthey hit it or not, to say this
is why we think they didn't orthis is what actually happened
versus what was supposed tohappen?
(41:18):
Because, realistically, when itcomes time, you know, you know,
you.
You essentially have a journalthen so that you don't forget
any of what happened over thosefirst three months and you can
really evaluate better.
You know at that juncture whereyou're like okay, let's decide
what you know, are we movingforward or aren't?
You have a better you know, youhave more evidence on which to
make those decisions, I think.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Yeah, and I would encourage brands, you know, to
come with that with an even keel, in the sense of, you know,
there's always I'm thinkingabout, you know, some clients
that we've worked with and Matt,you know, probably feels this
way more than I do of where, hey, we've created an amazing new
main image for them, or fortheir, you know, for their
product, and you know we'reworking through the widgets in
(42:00):
order to, you know, get Amazonto actually, not only, you know,
so they approve the image, butfor whatever reason, it's not
showing, like there's alwaysgoing to be like those little
hangups in the system.
So it's not that like that mainimage is live and up and, you
know, running perfectly on thatdate, but more of, was the image
done, was it submitted toAmazon on that date?
(42:21):
And then, you know, inevitablyin a certain portion of those
projects, there's going to besome sort of rework that has to
be done because Amazon didn'tindex it or some little thing
needs to be fixed with it orwhatever.
So, you know, just coming tothat with an even keel and look
at what's also within thatagency's control and your
(42:41):
control, and then what is not,and are they doing those inputs
that are within their control,and if so, that's a really good
sign while at the same timeunderstanding that there are
certain inputs, especially onAmazon.
Whether something goes live ornot, that isn't always in the
brand's control or the agency'scontrol.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
Matt, I'm interested in your thoughts on this.
We're getting a little bit longin the tooth on this episode,
but I think, on that point thatJohn just raised this question
of what is beyond the agency'scontrol, right, I think it's
valuable to make sure that youpay attention to that.
I think it's also valuable topay attention to, I guess, a
recognition of the fact that, asan agency and as a brand, we
(43:25):
should both know that that'slikely going to happen with a
certain percentage.
So what are we setting as thedate?
Like, are we saying, okay, havethe images done by this date,
but we know it might take alittle bit of time to get some
of them approved?
Or are we saying we want imagesapproved, ready, active,
whatever by this, but giving alittle bit of extra room on that
?
But also, I think and this iswhy I'm asking you, matt is in
(43:49):
the sense of sometimes thedelays on the agency side are
related less to what the agencyis doing and also what Amazon is
doing, and more to what is thebrand doing.
Are they responding back toinquiries from the agency?
Are they?
getting the digital assets thatthey need.
Are they those sorts of things?
(44:09):
And making sure that you've gotsomebody who's assigned there
to make sure that when they aska question they get an answer
and they need something, theyget what they need?
And when you decide to makethat evaluation of do we
continue or not, are they doingtheir job or not At least taking
a step back and owning theparts of that process where
maybe, as a brand, you failed,as opposed to the agency?
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Yeah, a hundred percent, that's.
That is 100% right.
I mean, in the end, it is apartnership and I think it's a
mistake to walk away to wipeyour hands of something and hand
it off to an agency for them tomanage all by themselves.
And I think that there's a lotof lessons to be learned from
what happened in this veryspecific instance that we're
(44:54):
talking about.
Obviously, there were things onboth sides there were things on
their side, there were thingson our side that went beyond the
normal amount of time to getthings done, and there were
reasons for all of it.
And I think, treating it morelike a partnership and really
understanding what the strengthsare of the agency and what your
(45:31):
strengths are as the brandowner, the representative of the
brand I that's why I think it'simportant to have a good
rapport with the brand manageror whoever the person is that's
managing the account, becausethe better rapport you have with
them, the more you're going tobe able to have those hard
conversations when somethinggoes awry or something is taking
longer than it should.
So, yeah, I think that's a bigpart of it is treating it like a
(45:55):
partnership, but also having agood rapport with the person
that you're working withdirectly All right.
Well, I think that's a big partof it is treating it like a
partnership, but also having agood rapport with the person
that you're working withdirectly.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
All right, well, I think this is a pretty good
place to wrap for this episode,mike, any last thoughts, now
that you know, as you go throughthis process of you, know maybe
one or two things in the futureyou do differently based on
your experience.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
I really like the idea of measuring inputs in
those first couple of months.
I think that's key and makingsure to determine what inputs
are likely to move you in theright direction, toward being
able to measure appropriateoutputs and whatever those goals
are.
So I really like that.
And then I think the otherpiece of that is really looking
(46:36):
at it as a partnership andrecognizing there is no perfect
agency.
Every single agency out thereis going to have things they're
really good at and some thingsthat maybe they're somewhat good
at right and you have to reallydetermine what those are.
So take some time to evaluatethat.
Decide whether when you hirethat agency, you choose to hire
(46:58):
them only for their corecompetencies and maybe you want
to take care of those otherthings that maybe they're sort
of good at and they could do itfor you.
But maybe you'd be better offcontinuing to manage that
yourself or getting a differentagency to do it.
Because I really think in thebest case scenario, even though
it might be easier to hire oneagency to do a whole bunch of
different things, you may getbetter results from coordinating
(47:21):
between two or three agenciesand just paying them for the
core competency that you knowthey should be really good.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
I think, some great discussion here, so I think this
is a great place to wrap.
Thank you everybody forlistening and we look forward to
having you on another TacticsTuesday.
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